'The Fault in Our Stars' Takes $48 Million To Sink 'Edge of Tomorrow'

'The Fault in Our Stars' reigned supreme at the U.S box office - beating both 'Edge of Tomorrow' and 'Maleficent'

The slow-burning publicity campaign for Fault in Our Stars worked perfectly. The teen-romance had started pulling in reviews about a year ago, but it finally got its full U.S release on Friday (June 6, 2014) and pulled in $48 million. Tom Cruise's well-received blockbuster Edge of Tomorrow could only manage $29.1 million.

'The Fault in Our Stars' Dominated the Box-Office

The Shailene Woodley starring movie is based on John Green's novel of the same name, which has to date sold over 10 million copies. It tells the story of two cancer-stricken teens falling in love. 20th Century Fox pulled off a perfect marketing strategy that focused heavily on social media outreach.

According to Box Office Mojo, The Fault in Our Stars' audience was almost entirely young women. They rushed out to see the movie on Friday ($26.2 million) and the 52 per cent dip on Saturday is one of the steepest ever. Still, the fact that it was one of the most front-loaded openings of all time meant the movie held of Maleficent in second place $33.5 million). To date, Angelina Jolie's movie has earned $127 million and now appears to be tracking towards $200 million.

There were high hopes for Edge of Tomorrow - which surprised with strong reviews - but the Cruise and Emily Blunt starrer matched the modest opening weekends of Elysium and John Carter. The $29.1 million was noticeably lower than Cruise's Oblivion. Critics had praised the movie's originality but the marketing campaign failed to hammer it home, effectively selling the time-loop sci-fi flick as a formulaic action movie.

Elsewhere, X-Men: Days of Future Past had another steep drop and took $14.7 million to bring its total to $189.1 million. Seth MacFarlane's A Million Ways to Die in the West took $7.2 million - a horrible 57 per cent drop. The movie has earned $30.1 million.

Despite its success, The Fault in Our Stars has almost no chance of retaining the No.1 spot this weekend given its sharp drop-off on Saturday. It also has heavyweights How to Train Your Dragon 2 and 22 Jump Street to contend with.